Just one-sixteenth into their season, the Vikings need to clean up their act on defense, according to defensive end Brian Robison.

Robison winced when players watched video replays this week of Minnesota’s 34-24 Game 1 loss to the Detroit Lions.

“Lack of a better word, it was pretty embarrassing watching on tape, how many missed tackles we had in the game,” he said Wednesday at Winter Park. “So we’ve definitely got to shore that up this week and make sure that we get two hands on them and we can bring ’em to the ground. And we’ve got to start creating some turnovers, as well.”

Robison, who was in on four tackles against the Lions, says another loss this weekend when the Vikings play the Bears in Chicago is simply unacceptable.

A must win?

“In my mind it is,” Robison said. “You never want to go down the first two games of the season, 0-2 in your division. That makes it a hard, uphill battle the rest of the season regardless of who your opponents are, especially in the NFC North, where we feel we feel like we play some of the toughest football in the NFL.

“In my mind, we need to go there and get a win.”

Lions quarterback Matthew Stafford completed 28 of 43 passes for 357 yards and two TDs against the Vikings.

“I thought we did a great job getting pressure on him,” he said. “Bottom line is he didn’t hold the ball long enough for us to get there. If you look at the tape, there weren’t many times he held the ball over 2, 2-1/2 seconds. A lot of times he was hitting his back foot and getting rid of the ball. And then you add in the screen game … you’re not going to get there on a screen 90 percent of the time.

“We were in his face all day; we just couldn’t get to him.”

Things have to be different against Bears quarterback Jay Cutler, Robison stressed.

“We didn’t do what we needed to do to win last weekend,” he said. “We’ve got to make sure that doesn’t happen again this weekend. Whether we’ve got to get to Cutler a step faster or whether we’ve got to shore up the screen game, we’ve got to cut down on missed tackles. We can’t play the way we played last weekend and expect to win a ballgame in Chicago.

“I think the big thing around here is we haven’t won there since ’07 and we don’t want to make it another year.”

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